


Bells of Heaven

by corbyinoz



Category: Justified
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-08 19:52:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corbyinoz/pseuds/corbyinoz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim deals with the consequences of an impulsive decision, one that brings old and new tragedies to a terrible connection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

Bells of Heaven  
Chapter 1

Some days, Tim Gutterson didn’t fit inside his own skin.

Now, that was crazy thinking, and Tim didn’t do Crazy. He knew it; some days he’d see it sitting off over near the dark horizon, backlit by flashes of something that looked a lot like mortar fire. Some days it was closer, so close he could smell the skin of it. It smelled like sweat, and fear, and something metallic that could have been gun smoke, could have been blood.

But he never invited it closer. He gave it a nod and kept pouring a river of alcohol between him and it, and that kept things just fine.

Still, there were days like today when he leaned back in his chair and wanted to keep going, keep pushing back with his feet till they left the floor and he upended against the cabinets behind him. Only on those days he imagined himself still going, falling with a momentum beyond his own power, down through the floor and the wall and the courtroom below. Falling and stretching out as he fell, so that all that was left of him was something long and flat and thin, ragged with holes, flapping in a breeze blowing from somewhere far, far east of Kentucky.

He hated those days.

“You busy?” said Art, the question mark redundant and both of them knowing it. “Got a fella wants chasing in Monterey. Shouldn’t be too strenuous. Got an address and everything.”

That fall was tempting him, so Tim held tight to the rope he was being offered. It was two weeks since the Mertens case after all. “What’d he do?”

“Well, now, not a whole lot of anything exciting. But he was at the right spot at the wrong time and saw a drug deal going down that the states attorney feels needs a more proper discussion in front of a judge.” The file landed with judicious accuracy on Tim’s desk. “Name of Cart Carter.”

Art was waiting for the response. Tim gave the eyebrow raise required. He threw in the smirk for free.

“Carter Carter? You’re shittin’ me.”

“Nope.” Art blinked his eyes in appreciation. “Brother of Bart Carter, at whose luxurious establishment he now resides, and Dart Carter, recently deceased.”

“With their sister Tart, I guess?”

“Now, now.” Due acknowledgement of the naming genius given, Art was prepared to be magnanimous. “The sisters’ names are something quite respectable.” Art walked off towards his office, pausing at the door. Tim waited; his boss wielded an inaudible band sting most days for his best efforts. “Randi, Brandi and Candi, I believe.”

Boom-tish. Tim gave it a chuckle. Art had worked for it.

He opened the file, noted the address as one of the less affluent rural towns in Owen County, and headed for the door. Crazy raised a salute to him as he left the fall behind.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&  
Tim had an address, but after driving around High Street and the length of Taylor, he was no closer to finding it. It took several queries, and one wad of spit at his feet when he mentioned the name before he found the track off Gallant Lane.

The house had only ever been utilitarian, but there were signs – a painted tire with cacti planted inside its circle, a strip of fabric half-tacked across the porch – that showed at some point, someone inside had wanted something they could claim as pleasing to the eye. The cacti lived on (nothing could kill that stuff, Tim knew), but the pink patterned fabric was stained and torn, and the aluminum siding had lost its neatness in an array of scratches and dents and even, on one particularly brutalized corner, a series of holes Tim guessed were made by someone with a hammer and a bucket of rage. It was depressing in its surrender, and Tim stopped looking quite so closely.

He stepped gingerly over the debris on the porch and knocked on the door. It rattled in its frame, a tooth ready to fall.

“Cart Carter? US Marshals.” Tim called it clearly, expecting nothing in reply. He heard sounds from within – heavy noises, someone stumbling. Then, to his surprise, a latch was fumbled and the door swung inward.

“Oh.” The man before him swayed and gripped the side of the door frame. “Oh.”

A stench strong enough to make Tim’s eyes water engulfed him.

“Hey, Mr Carter. It’s Bart, isn’t it?”

“Oh.” That seemed the extent of the man’s conversational abilities at this point. He squinted at and around Tim as if trying to hone in on his presence. Tim sighed.

“Bart, I’m Deputy Marshal Gutterson. You seen Cart lately? We’d like a word.”

“Oh, man.”

Encouraged by a two-word response, Tim pressed on.

“You know where Cart might be? Bart?”

“Thought you were…” Bart waved vaguely, clearly searching for some kind of meaning and maybe hoping Tim would give it.

“It’s real important we talk to Cart. Do you think – uh…” The smell was growing more foul as he stood there, and Tim decided entering the place should earn him more than a medal. “Think I could come inside?”

Bart chose that moment to sway backwards, and Tim took that to be permission.

The room he stepped into was the definition of squalor. Food rotted on the floor, embedded so long in the carpet that some kind of mould grew from it and spread in a yard-wide patch. In the far corner, fungi sprouted up the wall. A used sanitary pad lay by his foot, and next to it, sunk in a bean bag and seeming to meld with it, was a woman. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, showing yellowed whites. For a moment, acid-clear and killing him all over again, he thought she was dead.

“Cart? You want Cart?” 

There were all kinds of replies available to Tim, but no point in using any of them. He pushed past Bart to glance in each of the other three rooms. A used mattress in two of the three, and the third was a kitchen that challenged his gag reflex. It was possible Cart was staying here, but he wasn’t on the premises today and Tim figured his duty was done. 

“Here. Bart? My card. He comes back here, you let him know to call me.” Bart took Tim’s card as if it were some kind of talisman, with touching and uncalled for reverence. “All right. You take care now, y’hear?” He stepped towards the door and didn’t look down at her because he couldn’t just then.

“You bet. Sure thing. You – “ and Bart was scrambling, coming up with something that made sense of the moment. “You here about the dog?”

“The dog? No.”

But Bart grabbed at the topic to hold himself upright.

“Assholes down road. Sombitches complain about the dog. I tell ‘em they can rot in hell.”

“Okay, well, Bart, no, I ain’t here for the dog.”

Bart nodded. He’d accomplished something.

With an answering nod, Tim backed out of the house, and found himself taking deep breaths the minute he was clear. The view from the porch wasn’t too bad; a wasteland across the road, but pretty with spring flowers and tufts of grass big enough to hide a man under. Just the sight of the green helped steady him against the hell at his back.

A low-pitched moan caught his ears. Tim frowned, wondered if it was Cart, passed out round back. He hesitated, then left the porch and carefully followed the beaten earth track around the side of the house.

Against a shed at the end of the space that could possibly be termed the yard was a cage. A piece of plasterboard had collapsed against one side of it. Grass tangled up through the side of the cage exposed to the rear, and in front lay a pile of filthy rags. Inside, impossibly, was a dog.

Even before he reached the cage he could see that she had outgrown it by half her size again. Her bony flanks were pressed hard against the mesh, and open sores littered her body – along her back, where the spine rubbed against the top of the cage, across her head, where it twisted against the door.

And the rage filled his skin in a way he hadn’t been able to for two weeks now.

It was beyond stupid. This was nudging towards Crazy, tipping a Raylan Givens sized hat to the sonofabitch.

But suddenly, Tim couldn’t stand the fact of those bars. All at once the very existence of them was an iron spike in his soul, and as he watched that sore-ridden, bone rattling old dog lift her lips in a snarl as feeble as it was futile, he felt the storm-surge lift beneath his feet, sway him where he stood. Helplessness and a blood-borne resistance to it was the current that swayed him. 

He crouched down, crooned a little, and lifted the latch.

The old girl whined. Faced with an opening free of lines, she floundered to ad lib her way to freedom. Tim was the prompt, low and sure.

“Come on, honey. Come on, baby girl.”

The dog’s back legs buckled under, but the tip of her tail began threshing furiously as Tim held his hand up to her, fingers curled towards him for safety. She tottered upright, then placed one paw after another as if stepping on hot bricks, each step a near collapse from one side to the other. When her shoulder cleared the cage, she gave a sound almost human in its anxiety to please.

“Oh, baby girl, they got you all caught up in there, haven’t they, darlin’? You gonna come out now? You comin’ out for a run with me?”

Tongue flickering, tail whipping back and forth, she crouched to his hand and further, until her head lowered to the ground and she stumbled into his chest. He didn’t even have to think. Just ran his hands once, twice down her sorry flanks, light as a lover; then scoped and picked her up, committing a crime and a kindness with no one to blame him for either.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&  
“Just what do you think I can do for this dog?”

Her hands didn’t look gentle, but for all their strength they gripped the dog they moved over as delicate as a spider on a web.

“I don’t know. She needs help.”

As an exercise in inadequacy, his comment was a winner.

“Hmmph. And at what point did you come to this realization?” He looked at her, blankly. “How long have you had this dog?”

“About twenty minutes. Give or take.”

Her face grew still, a grinding of gears – from fifth to neutral.

“You a ranger?”

Yes, he almost said, always. But then he realized she meant park ranger, animal wrangler for the council, and he shook his head.

“US Marshal. I found her at a house I was just at.”

“So you’re not the owner?”

He wanted a different answer, but as she looked at him, whiplash bold, he shook his head again.

“I just thought she – “ He stopped, stymied by the impracticalities of his stupid kindness. The vet looked at him.

“You aim to pay for her?”

“Treatment? Yes, yeah. Sure.” He paused, brain coming up with a side order of spite. “That’s the bottom line, huh?”

“Of course it is. Romantic gestures never come cheap.”


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2  
When he stopped the car outside his house and looked at her, she was shivering.

Well, that was okay. He’d shivered himself, a time or two.

Carrying her into his house didn’t feel as furtive as it should. A dirty wind began to pick up and flicked hair into his face, but he didn’t turn away from it. It didn’t make any sense to him, but he found himself broadening his shoulders, lifting his head.

Hey, Pa. Look what I brought home.

He sidled his way through doors and openings, juggling the keys, until he reached the laundry with its steel trough. She was a gray creature of scurf and dirt, and he knew he was looking forward to dropping her into the tub.

Nothing he liked better than cleaning up a mess. 

He put her on the mat and then ran warm water into the trough. The medicated shampoo the vet sold him was bright yellow – it looked ugly, swirling into the water, but he figured it was like medicine, the nastier the better.

“C’mon honey, let’s get you into there.” A sing song voice not his own, but it didn’t matter; she whipped her tail again and he felt happy, gloriously happy, as he lifted her bony frame and lowered her oh so carefully into the bath.

She talked to him, of course; he knew she was a talker from the moment he advanced towards her, back at the cage. A querulous, confidential sound. “What are you doing to me, young man?”

“Doing you good, honey,” he said, and dribbled water over her back, her flanks, her gaping, gnawing sores.

His fingers crooked and dared to touch. So much hurt; so much soil, and filth, and awful human neglect. Gently, so gently, he worked, letting water ease into months and years of cruelty. A swirl of his fingers, two, and a coat presumed dull brown was revealed as white. Astonishing. Wonderful.

His mobile rang.

“Shit!” Tim froze, his hands in her hair, his mind suddenly snapped back to duty.

“Shit!” He lifted his hands, placating. “Stay here. Gotta get this. Shit.”

Backing away from the laundry as though he could placate what he left behind, he ducked for the kitchen and grabbed his phone.

“Art?”

“You’re alive. Praise Jesus.”

“Art, I’m sorry. Shoulda called in.”

“No, really. Wouldn’t want to inconvenience you. Guess Monterey’s just full of all kinds of diversions.”

“Not so much.” Tim hastened back to the laundry, tucking the phone against his shoulder as he went. “Carter wasn’t there.”

“No, knew that. You gonna ask if I’ve gone psychic?”

“Where’d he turn up?”

“Owenton. Local PD found him in a flophouse, hauled his ass in. That was three hours ago, and you promised Rachel a lift home. When you made it back from the wilds of Monterey.”

“I’m sorry, chief. Took longer than I thought, and when I turned up nothin’ I thought an early day wouldn’t hurt.”

“You? An early day? Should I start looking for other signs of the apocalypse?”

“Tell Rachel I’ll be right there.”

“No need. Raylan’s picked up your slack. And I’m gonna give you a moment to consider the apocalyptic nature of that statement. Line it up with you taking off and I’m gonna start looking for some fornicating lions and lambs.”

“I’m sorry, Art.” I was stealing a dog.

“No, don’t pay it no mind. You’re alive and well, Rachel’s being escorted home by the guy in the hat and I’m keeping myself busy stockpiling TP for the zombie attack I expect any minute now.”

There was no point trying to top Art, so he said his goodbyes and turned back to what was more important to him. More warm water as she shivered, more slow and careful cleaning, and after half an hour she was revealed as a brindle dog of no fixed breed. Maybe a touch of retriever; maybe part whippet? It didn’t matter to him. He scooped her up in a towel and carried her into the back room, where the sun would come in the morning.

Drying her was a slow process, skirting the worst of the sores, patting down miserable ribs and belly. She tried to lick him once, and he burst out laughing. Of all the laughs he’d almost given voice to these past years, this was one he hadn’t heard for a long, long time.

He intended to make her a nest out there, in the corner by the window, but when it came time to head to bed, much earlier than he usually did and far more sober, it felt all kinds of wrong. His bedroom was cold, anyway, and here there would be warmth in the morning. It wasn’t the first time he’d slept on this floor. And this time he wouldn’t be holding his gun in fingers cramped around the grip, tight, white around the knuckles. So man and dog settled together, she with one of her human groans as her head came to rest against his leg. And the echo, when it came, thrilling and distant like the belling of hounds at the hunt, flicked the years away from him as though they were nothing but ghosts on a ten year old’s shoulder.  
___________________________________________________________________  
She brought it into the house with the kind of flourish Tim usually dreaded. But when he looked up quickly he saw one of her safer smiles, steady eyes and hands, and he smiled briefly himself – until he saw what she had in her bag.

“Goddam it, Ma!”

“Don’t blaspheme. Fucker.” She bared her teeth at him, full of affection, and lifted the black and white fluffy mass out of the bag to receive Shelley’s screams of joy.

“Oh, he’s soooo sweet!”

“Name’s Jazz, and he’s our’n. Got him from Heck Culverson’s place.”

Tim’s breath caught again, another little stitch of fear in a ragbag at the heart of him.

“Ma, you were supposed to be gettin’ groceries.”

She waved his words away. Airy. Defiant.

“We got enough till Monday. Couldn’t resist Jazz here.”

“Look!” Shelley knelt by him, rapt in his tentative exploration. “He loves us.”

“He’s chaos on four legs.” Tim kept a stock of scowls for his mother’s playful times. Sometimes they worked to keep her in the playground. 

“What in hell’s that?” Pixie leaned in the doorframe, matching Tim’s expression with one even more disapproving.

“Oh fer crissakes! You two! Raised me a couple of bowed up brats. Thank God for you, Shelley.’Least you know how to enjoy a puppy.”

“It’s gonna eat everything.” Tim spread his hands, covering them all.

“Anal retentive midget!”

He glowered but she’d got him; a corner of his mouth twitched. She knew it too, always did, and bounced over to grab him in a hug that quickly degenerated into a noogee.

“Ow. Fine. But I ain’t cleanin’ up after it.”

Shelley glared. “Stop calling him ‘it’. You’ll hurt his feelings.”

“Hurt his feelings more if I dropkicked the useless mutt into the river.”

“Maaaa!”

“Tim, shut your mouth. Shelley, stop whining.”

He saw her humor slipping, regretted his snap. He always watched her, alert, unstinting; like a wild thing in the forest, tensed for the unusual.

A dog in her bag was unusual.

“Don’t you worry so, Mister Man of the House. Pa’s back soon, and your mama’s bein’ careful.”

“You bein’ careful, Mama?”

“Careful as mice.” She squeezed him, plain and thin but happy, too, at the sight of the little dog stumbling at their feet.

“Why’s he called Jazz?” Pixie’s scowl had drifted to bemusement. She was a child who liked to know the what and how of things, if not the why.

“Seemed like a good name.” Mama preened. “Always was good at namin’ wild creatures.”

“Huh. ‘Tim’?” 

“Oh, honey. He ain’t wild.”

“Nope. He’s domesticated.” Shelley sat back on her heels. “He’s gonna make someone a good little wife one a these days.”

Tim flipped them all the bird and got a clip on the back of his head for the effort.

Pixie joined her sister on the floor, letting the pup sniff at her fingers and then clamber all over them. 

“Reckon we could train him?”

“Reckon we can.” His mama beamed confidence, even as Jazz squatted to piss on the floor, a dribble that gave Shelley another chance to shriek. “Train him to fetch. Pick up sticks. Pick up shoes. Pick up that bottom lip of yours.” Tim swiped at her; she gave a slow-motion kung fu chop to his neck.

“Train him to bite Mr Galby.”

“Ha!” An explosive snort from his mama, and all the time he kept watching, waiting, until his mama said, “And I saw Carrie-Jean. Says these new meds are the bees’ underpants.”

Tim tucked in his worry and finally offered a trace of happiness to shadow her own.

“You think Pa’ll like the dog?”

“Your daddy’ll love the dog. Means he don’t have to worry so when he’s away.”

Pixie pursed her lips. “He ain’t a guard dog, Mama.”

“Not yet. But you wait till he grows some. You see those big paws? That’s gonna be a big dog someday.”

Shelley gave up trying to entice the black and white ball to her. “Who does he belong to, Mama?”

“Why, to his own self, Shelley-girl. What do you think? That dog will make his own choices ‘bout who he likes and who he trusts. So you all better be real nice to my little boy Jazz.”

Shelley and Pixie promptly dropped into the kind of competition they loved, cooing and sweet-talking to get eh pup’s attention. Tim rolled his eyes and went back to organizing the spare cupboard, keeping one eye on the love-in as he re-stacked shelves and stuck up labels for each old container they owned. He muttered, half-heartedly, as his sisters crashed into him while chasing Jazz, and he flicked a look past them to see his mother calm, content, only her fingers working on the spine of the bag she still hadn’t put down. This was when he loved her most, he told himself, trying to believe it.

But when Jazz tiredly staggered onto his mattress in the living room and collapsed into sleep, he wasn’t ready for the extra burst of happiness that came with the dog’s choice. Tim slept in the living room to be on call, just in case, at the ready; those nights when screams and bangs and red and blue lights made up and tore into his world. As Jazz fell into the trust-soaked sleep of a tired pup, Tim felt it quicken in his blood; the sense that, for the only time since his father told him he had to be the one to make the calls, he was not alone on that front line. He never spoke of it. The girls would scoff, and his father would never understand; but Tim knew that dog had found the member of the family who needed him most, and the thrill of partnership made him smile into his sleep for the first time in six years.


	3. three

Tim was the self-appointed guardian of the meds.

Every morning and evening he would carefully line up the multi-coloured pile of pills – twelve in the morning, less and different at night – and every morning and evening his mother would stand beside the kitchen table and take each one.

Tim’s role was never discussed. Mama’s was more of an impromptu performance.

When he thought of them at all, he thought of the drugs as chains, padlocked, cumbersome, holding down the bright and beautiful balloon that was his mother’s mind. He knew it was necessary, more than most he knew that neglect of any moment of his solemn ritual would result in that balloon breaking free. A part of his mind liked to think of her floating far above him, full of her wonderful, impossible thoughts. Part of him loved the view she showed him from way up there.

But the stronger, harder part knew that she wouldn’t stop, she’d keep floating higher and higher, caught on any current offered until in the end, she wouldn’t be able to find her way back to them.

So he wrapped the chains around her and she let him. Sometimes with gratitude, sometimes with resentment. Sometimes she would look at him, begging a little – “I’m doing good, now, sweetie, don’t you think? How about we leave them just for a day, just for one day.” And Tim would shake his head, hating those days.

One by one he would wrap the chains tight about her, holding on fast to her until his daddy came home.  
___________________________________________________________________

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to the newest member of our little family here in the Lexington Marshal’s Office. His name is Burl Torvey. Now he’s real pretty and all, but he ain’t bought and paid for yet, so you break him, you replace him.” Art slapped his newest transfer on the back and turned for the door. “Raylan, like you to show him the ropes. I usually would, Burl, but I got a LPD ‘n’ Marshal’s Office circle jerk goin’ on over at the mayor’s place. I’ll see you when I get back.” He half-pivoted, casting about for his jacket, finally saw it thrown over the chair by Tim’s desk. “Play nice while I’m gone.”

“Sure thing, Art.” Raylan uncoiled from his seat and put out a hand. “Burl, good to meet you. Where you from?”

Stood together, Burl shaded Raylan by an inch in height, and six inches in width across the shoulders.

“Well, I’m still kickin’ sand outta my boots,” Burl grinned, and took Raylan’s hand. “Just home from my second tour of Afghanistan. Marine, first division.”

Tim thought about saying something – the insult came as quick as a blink between Ranger and Marine – but a kinder angel cautioned him towards a neutral smile instead.

Besides, Rachel gave him a Look, and while he’d handled IEDs and juggled C4, he was not touching that.

“Afghanistan, hey?” Raylan was all lazy charm, doing his second good turn for the week - possibly a record. “Doesn’t sound fun.”

“Well… there’s some would say it ain’t that much different back home these days.” Burl put his hands on his hips, very much at ease. “Mind you, they don’t know shit. Afghanistan was hell in a bucket from Day One. I’ve picked teeth outta my hair before breakfast, and that was a slow day.”

“You don’t say?” Raylan murmured. Tim saw his glance, ignored it. A scowl at his computer screen seemed a better option.

“Really?” Davey Parkhurst hovered by Burl, clearly drawn to the possibility of a war story. “You see a lot of action, then?”

“Don’t know what you’d call action, but we sure had a lot of runnin’ and jumpin’ and hangin’ onto our butts with both hands.” Burt shook his hand. “You ever serve your country?”

“He’s serving it now.” Tim spoke loud enough for Burl to hear, and he swung around, grin like a candy for a new acquaintance.

“Burl Torvey.” A hand, over the computer, palm down so that Tim’s hand would be neatly submerged beneath his own.

“Tim Gutterson.”

“Hey, Burl?” Nelson had sidled closer, joining Davey. “You get to do any of that Osama stuff?” He sent a subversive little look at Tim.

“Zero Dark Thirty?” Davey was in the same zone. “You go in with the team?”

Burl chuckled, and it sounded to Tim like greasy fries tumbling down a drain.

“Well, if I was, I couldn’t tell you now, could I?” He leaned forward, confidential. “But I can say I was there for Operation Moshtarak in Helmand Province. Sent more’n one Taliban truck straight into the air.”

Nelson and Parkhurst seemed ready to settle in for the full matinee showing, so Raylan eased himself between the three.

“Gentlemen, I’m sure Burl would love to show you his scars later, but in the meantime – walk with me, Burl, and I’ll take you round the courthouse.”

“Sure. That’d be great. So tell me – are you 'the' Raylan Givens?”

Tim nearly groaned. Raylan’s smile was a thin one. 

“That depends on what constitutes the parameters of 'that' Raylan Givens.”

“No, you’re right, I’m sorry.” Burl raised his hands in apology. “Comin’ on too strong there, I know it. Just that – I got a friend in the DEA, said Bucks was the worst scumbag he ever met in thirty years of law enforcement. Said everyone in the Miami Dade office broke out the Jose when Tommy bought it, and it took some kind of lawman to bring him down.”

Tim watched, and saw exactly what he expected to see; Raylan dipping his head a little, lips twitching. Pleased. Burl seemed to know it, too.

“You gotta tell me about it. My buddy will be green when he hears I got the story from the man himself.”

“Well, I guess we can converse some while I show you around.” Hat flipped on, stagger set to stun. Tim blew out his breath slightly, all the reaction he allowed himself, and started typing heavily on his computer.

Rachel watched them leave, then picked up a folder and came over to stand silently in front of Tim. He lasted twenty seconds before coming up for air. “What?”

“Hartington file. And you could have been nicer.”

“He was humpin’ Raylan’s leg. In the bullpen.”

“Huh.”

It always worked on him, and he pushed back, waving a hand.

“He’s a jerk. ‘Still got sand in his boots’. He’s gotta be back for months to get through Glynco.”

“There’s no need to go making snap judgments, Deputy Gutterson. Give him a chance.” Rachel walked back to her own desk, all compact sense and fairness. “I would have thought you’d have something in common.”

The thought gave him the chance to act scandalized.

“He’s probably some fobbit. The only thing we got in common is an ass points to the ground. And even then he’s can’t talk when he sits down.”

“Whatever.” Rachel gave him a second Look, this one in admonition. “You got to find a way to get along with him, Tim, so don’t go looking for things that aren’t there.”

For the first time in years, he heard his mother’s voice in his head, and she was saying the same thing. And his own voice answered her, as he did all those years ago; I always find what I’m looking for, Mama.  
___________________________________________________________________

Tim hit 13 hard, and it hit him right back.

He’d always been lean (“Skinny as a stick with a haircut” his mama said, in one of her mean moods). He’d always been the smallest in his class. In his thirteenth year he grew four inches, and suddenly everything that made sense on a short person was exaggerated into cartoon-like joints and features. 

He’d never been a popular kid. He was quiet, and intense, and kind. Nobody bothered much with him either way. Invitations to folks’ houses dried up when there was no reciprocation, and questions were asked about ‘what was goin’ on in that there Gutterson house’. It wasn’t long before the word was whispered about, until one day Yale Deaver came to him and said, without bothering to hide the malice, “Your mama’s crazier’n a junebug.” Once it was said, it became an understood fact, like the way ice storms hit in February and Mrs Edgeworth was an old bitch when it came to her husband (him being no better than he ought to be, anyways). There was a subtle excision of Tim from the rest of the class, barely noticeable to an outsider and largely ignored by Tim, who took the attitude that if he didn’t acknowledge his status, it couldn’t be used against him. So he’d occasionally join in on conversations about parties he knew he’d never be invited to, or barbecues to which the Guttersons would never be asked to bring a plate. 

“Hope it’s a hot one on Sunday, love me a barbecue,” he’d say cheerfully, looking them straight in the eye, daring them to call him on it. They never did, and he’d count it as some kind of victory; until Sunday rolled around, and he spent it cleaning house while the late May sun blazed with cruel indifference through the front windows. 

On those days, Jazz would sense his unhappiness and stay close and quiet, disinclined to eat through the Gutterson belongings as he usually did.

Because Tim had been right; Jazz did eat everything. Not just forsaken shoes, or rugs, or broom-handles; but TV cords, pot plants, even tablecloths. Shelley would scold, Mama would laugh, but it was Tim who swept up the pieces, muttering, and put them in the bin, just like it was Tim who cleaned up the yard (finding the remains of many Gutterson belongings in Jazz’s offerings, severely transformed by his internal makings). 

It all became part of Tim’s jobs because Jazz had, by some kind of unspoken, family osmosis, been awarded to him as his. Mama’s interest waxed and waned, driven by her internal tides that so often threatened to wash her away from them all. Shelley would adopt Jazz for an afternoon and brush his hair into magnificent constructions of gel and ribbons and then get distracted. Book-loving Pixie remained largely uninterested. So it was Tim who took Jazz with him into the forest, up the mountain as far as they could go and get back in daylight. His body was ugly, but it was strong; and although he never thought of the word as having anything to do with him, it was graceful, too. The grace was there in the way his body did whatever he asked of it, no matter how torturous. Climbing trees, scaling rocks, swimming in the cold green river, spitted with foam and branches in the late spring floods. He’d crawl out as Jazz laughed at him from the bank and shiver in the patches of sunlight coming through the red oak leaves, looking down at the body that was all angles and knots, knees and elbows like roadblocks in his own skin, feet and hands like a frog’s, all splayed and knobby and long. And somehow, it didn’t matter. In his mind, his awkward self was as unpossessable as the river, and like the river, he knew this growth was just pushing past the boundaries until everything settled down again come full summer.

His father came home in mid-June. Tim was never certain where his father went on his trips. “Headin’ south, work to be had at Pine Bluff,” his father had said in April; but it could just as easily have been north to Corning, or west to Ash Flat, and he wouldn’t always arrive back from the direction he left. It never followed a pattern Tim could divine, and he’d long since stopped asking. Sometimes his father brought home canned goods, or off-cut clothing; once he had a trunkful of new VHS tapes. His mother was thrilled with it all.

In Tim’s thirteenth June his father pulled into the drive with the back seat brimming with plastic sheeting.

“Look at that!” Mama shrieked. “Dally Gutterson, if you don’t beat all!” She threw herself into his arms, and he held her, carefully, quiet in his homecoming as she celebrated out loud.

Shelley, too, shrieked. Tim looked up from where he was patching the spouting and gave a friendly wave, hands too busy with duct tape and scissors (and fending Jazz away from both) to do much else. 

“Hello, son.” Dally came and stood behind him, calm, gentle. “I see you’re still holding down the fort.”

“Not so much a fort, more a funhouse,” said Tim, and he grinned up at his father, squinting against the sun that burst around his head. Dally put his hand on Tim’s shoulder.

“Good work, boy.” And it was enough, those few sincere words of thanks and praise, for all the months of watching and caring and doing that Tim took upon himself in his father’s absence.

His daddy walked back to where his mama was dancing on the spot. “How you doin’, darlin’?” he said, taking each of her hands in his own.

“I’m good, sweetheart, real good,” and they stood there together with something between them that made Tim turn back to his taping with sudden vigour. Thirteen year old boys did not tear up at their parents’ doings.

“Well, hello, Dally! So you made it back!” The halloo came from next door, and the enormous figure of Thurgood Galby, propped against his porch railing. 

“Hey there, Thurgood. Y’all doin’ well?”

“Doin’ real well, real well, Dally. Whyn’t you and the family come over tonight, have us a cook-up, catch up on the news, huh?”

Tim didn’t know how far his father had driven that day, but he could see the tired tightness around his eyes and knew that supper with the ever expanding and expansive Thurgood, and his eternally petite and pretty wife Rhonda, was not what he had planned. But Dally Gutterson was courteous to a fault, so he smiled widely and simply said, “Well, that sounds alright.”

Tim cut the tape and straightened, shook the spout a little to see if it would hold. It saved him from shaking Mister Galby’s neck.

“Jazz. C’mon now,” and Tim collected a load of plastic sheeting from the car, wondering where the hell he’d store it, before following his parents inside.

“Dad? Where’d you get this from?”

“Fella down Tuckerman way. Painted three of his rooms and talked him into throwing them in as a bonus. Reckon I can sell it to old Mosley.”

And that was the way of it; twenty odd jobs and odd payments for eight weeks’ work, with nothing but vague recollections of a deal here, a bargain there to bear witness to his father’s labours. Tim took the plastic into the backroom. It occasionally occurred to him to wonder if his father’s dealings were on the right side of the law, and it brushed past his mind now, but the thought never settled. Dally Gutterson might be a poor businessman, but he was as honest and honorable as the summer was long and hot, and Tim knew he could stake his faith in that.

Mama insisted on a wash and brush up for the whole family before trekking to the Galby’s, arms laden with salads and Shelley’s apricot pie.

“Well, howdy, Clara! Dally!” Rhonda Galby met them by the side of the house, took Mama’s offering from her as though to spare her the burden. “We’re all in back, just holler so he hears you.”

Galby couldn’t hear anyone over the sound of his own voice, Tim thought. There was something about the man that scraped across his soul, and he stayed close to Mama, watching as the occasion and the excitement of her man’s return set the balloon twisting up off the ground.

They ate well for the first time in months – Galby’s belly was honestly come by – and Tim took thirds and fourths as his body woke to appetite long-suppressed. Rhonda laughed, and ruffled his hair.

“I swear, Tim Gutterson, I don’t know how your mama feeds you! You’d eat me out of house and home if’n you were mine.”

Vaguely, Tim sensed some kind of insult there. Not to him, which was the only reason it sparked a warning. He watched harder, even as he stretched out on the lawn against Jazz’s belly, and after a time he thought he heard a scratchiness in everything Rhonda said, a kind of Coleman lamp hiss playing underneath the conversation. He saw something else, too; she never looked at his daddy. 

It made no sense to him, but as he watched her in the gathering dusk, laughing at something Thurgood boomed, sitting with her dress tucked neatly under her thighs and toes pointed inwards, he realized that, pretty as she was, the sight of her little breasts shadowed in the porchlight made him as worried as they made him burn.


	4. Chapter 4

4  
By the time Art came back, considerably less sanguine than when he’d left, Raylan and Burl had completed their tour and Raylan was settling Burl into his desk, next to Nelson and across the bullpen from himself, Rachel and Tim. Nelson hovered like a junior at a senior prom, offering anything Burl was lacking.

“Nelson? You looking to get pinned?” 

Art followed Tim’s comment with his eyes to where Nelson studiously turned his back on them both as he bent to ask Burl if that stapler was okay by him, there was a different kind in the store cupboard if he wanted it?

“What’d I miss?” said Art, glancing back at Tim.

“Raylan gettin’ stroked by the new guy. Hell, everyone gettin’ stroked by the new guy.”

The look Art gave Tim was not a complimentary one.

“The ‘new guy’ has some serious mojo in his record. You’d best keep that smart mouth of yours on a leash for a while.”

Tim snorted. Art bit.

“What?”

“’Serious mojo’.” A heavy pause for effect. “He’s a Marine. Probably jerks off at national level, sure, but the rest is all mouth and trousers.”

“Oh. Oh.” Art made a sad face. “Is Timmy feeling a little bit overwhelmed by the big bad army man?”

“I just think – “ and Tim dropped back into his broadest drawl, safety there, “he’s some kind of shammerai, taking his medals out for a dance.”

“I seem to recall you making some kind of comment ‘bout ‘another award’?”

“That wasn’t army, and you know it.”

“Huh. Well, just try not to be a tight ass little shit to the newbie, okay?”

“Okay,” Tim said. He couldn’t summon enthusiasm, but he could fake obedience. He was a military man, after all.

Raylan loomed up alongside his desk, relaxed with his day and with Burl Torvey.

“Thought I’d take Burl to Lindsay’s for a round or two. Care to join us?”

“Now that’s a fine idea,” Art began, with a meaningful look at Tim, but he was already shaking his head.

“No can do. Sorry, Raylan.”

“What?” Burl wandered over, smiling wide. “You got some pretty thing waitin’ on you at home?”

Beyond arrogance; that was downright invasive.

“Matter of fact, I do.” Tim hit shut down on the computer and pushed back, finding his feet in one smooth motion, baring his teeth in a parody of goodwill. “Y’all have a good night. Here.” He reached for his wallet, pulled out a couple of dollar bills and held them for Burl to take. “You go ahead and have one on me.”

“Why, thank you,” said Burl. “You know I will.”

And Tim heard it, even if no one else did, because he always paid attention, always watched for it. 

Game on.

He couldn’t quite meet Rachel’s eye, which annoyed the hell out of him all the way to his car. It wasn’t against the law to take a dislike to a bragging sack of Marine shit, was it? If it was, five thousand Rangers should be court-martialled on the spot.

The irritation stayed with him, sand in his eye, until he got home and turned off the engine. That was his first chance to properly hear it.

It was unearthly; a wraith of sound, floating up through his windows and roof, hovering there in the afternoon’s last light. His heart thumped hard in his throat and he instinctively reached for his gun as a hundred childhood terrors made their pitiless way across the back of his neck and into the pit of his belly.

Mrs. Goosens was waiting by his porch, irradiated with pleasure at the size of her complaint.

“You hear that? You hear that? All afternoon, young man. One thirty five, I took note, one thirty five, and it hasn’t stopped since.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Mrs. Goosen, I’ll –“

“I can have it put down, you know. I can get Roy to shoot the damned thing.”

A fresh howl from inside the house, and Tim pushed past her, hands still raised in apology, breaking into a run for the door.

“I’ll see to it,” he called, and slammed the door closed behind him.

At once, the howling stopped. He heard a thump, then a dragging sound, and then the talk began; where have you been? Why did you leave me?

“I’m sorry, baby girl.” He hurried through the living room to his small kitchen and back room where he’d left the dog nestled on a pile of rugs that morning. She wasn’t there – and a swinging check of the room showed him the laundry door, open when he left, now closed and banging with the force of something repeatedly colliding with it.

“Hold on, alright, I’m coming,” he said. He marveled that she was upright and fit to make this level of noise. In two strides he was at the door and pushing it open.

He’d thought to store the dogfood in a container above the dryer. It had seemed like a sound plan. What was left of the food was now spread across the laundry floor, and she was wagging her whole back end for joy at seeing him and in pride for what she’d achieved. A helpless kind of laugh escaped him.

“Oh, Jazz. Look at what you’ve gone and done.”

A slip. A stumble in his mouth. A day of irritation and frustration and all of it was gone as he felt himself hurt so quickly and so completely that it was as if the fall had been a physical one, skinning his flesh in one savage rip.

Jazz was dead twelve years, and all the good of his family dead with him.

The dog was busy pushing her nose into his crotch, between his legs, too full of delight to notice before he pushed her aside and grabbed for the trough. For a long moment he thought he was going to throw up; then a worse feeling when he realized he wasn’t, and all the sadness and sick horror was settling back down into his body after all.

Tim hung there, ignoring her, trying to ignore his own self. The pattern of the tile around the taps transfixed him, and he stayed in it, lost in a swirl of blue on orange, cold and hot and twisting towards nausea without ever quite getting there.

The dog food crunched under his feet.

“Goddammit,” he whispered. “Goddammit.”

She was winding through his legs again, her sores red but shiny now, healing. Her head butted against the long fingers dangling off the front of the trough as he leant on his elbows above it. She whined.

“I know. I know.” He whispered it over and over again, the words mere sounds, echoing oddly in the confined space of the laundry. At last he closed his eyes and allowed his knees to fold so that he slid into a knot on the floor, with the dog gladly climbing onto his lap, her tail still wagging with happiness.

He held her then, both hands cupped about her ears, and at last, she stilled. Her mouth closed, lolling tongue tucked away; she looked back at him with huge brown eyes.

If he sat like this, quiet like this, holding tight to her fur, with the dog food under his ass and the smell of urine in his nostrils – if he did, for a time, then maybe.

Maybe.

Maybe, this would be one more night when he wouldn’t float away.


	5. Chapter 5

It was a long night, empty of any kind of light, cold with the coming of a darker day. The gray dawn illuminated an ache that gripped him from skull to spine to heels, all his muscles tight with tension, a high-tensile fence wire straining beneath the bolt-cutter’s edge. 

The dog stayed curled on him, liking his warmth.

Hard to press out his legs, pull his shoulders back from where they’d curled with instinctive fellowship towards his only companion through the night. He un-cricked his neck – left, right, left again – then gently pushed the dog off him and clawed his way to his feet.

There was a yellow sheen to the dull light in his kitchen, and he knew that snow was coming. It was early in the year for it, but nature paid no heed to calendars when she was in the mood, and her mood was bitter, he could tell. He knew he’d smell it when he opened the door – a clean, crisp threat. His own smell was sour, and he grimaced.

On the breakfast bar and the sink rested plates and cups. He wasn’t sure when he’d used them. Not for days, certainly; he ate at lunch, when other people were around, but had no appetite at home. Not for three weeks now. He thought he’d forced breakfast on the weekend. It wasn’t like him to leave dishes afterwards but he’d had other things to think about. Dog ownership. Snow coming.

In his bedroom clothes lay on the floor. It was as if he were leaving pieces of himself scattered behind, one layer, another. He hurried to the bathroom to clean what was left.

Walking into the warmth and light of the office set him to a subtle shiver.

Burl’s voice brought that shiver to a shake.

“Arghandab, oh man, fulla the worst kinda assholes. You’d see ‘em on the road, you know, the ANP, the police, they’d get outta their uniforms at the checkpoints and pretend to be bandits so they could fleece the locals as they came through. They saw us coming, they’d be back into their uniforms lickety split. One time I stopped, and I kinda stood over him, asked him how many folks he’d stolen from that day. Man, he nearly shit his baggy trousered self. So I hauled him up, shook him down, took everything he had on him and went back into town with it, handed it out to folks I knew needed the help.”

Nelson and Davey and Melissa Delgarno were there, beaming their admiration. Tim scowled his way past, even as Burl yelled out, “Mornin’, Tim!”

Raylan’s desk was empty as he passed it. He slumped into his chair, turned on the computer, tried to ignore the way it felt like fifth grade and that gradual separation all over again. That was Crazy, dragging that old shit back to light, and Tim didn’t do Crazy.

He got busy lining up the day’s tasks, focused on a screen and a list of names and addresses he’d asked LPD to send over late last night. So he couldn’t be sure who asked the question, but even as he tried to block out the obnoxious sound of Burl’s voice, someone said, “Say, Burl, why’d you think some folks won’t talk about their army stories?”

“Well,” Burl drawled, full of judicious consideration, “I figure there’s three likely causes. One is they sat on their behinds back in HQ all the livelong day, got nothing to talk about. Fella like that’d be real careful opening his mouth, ‘case a vet who actually knew something about something happened by.”

“I’ve heard a tall tale or two spun by folks who weren’t even born when it all happened.” That was Raylan’s voice, and Tim’s gut twisted tighter. It made no sense, why Raylan being over there, listening to Burl, would send that little spike of hurt into his belly. But then, Tim never could figure out just what was what when it came to Raylan. With all his self-absorption and pig-headedness, Raylan was no kind of team player; but Tim was on his team, nonetheless, and that meant something fundamental to him. He just wasn’t certain it meant the same thing to Raylan.

“That’s the truth. But a Marine would put down a man braggin’ where he don’t have the right.”

“So what’s the other reasons?”

“Easy. He’s a pussy.” A pause. “ Or he’s a Ranger.” There was a smattering of light, nervous laughter.

Tim smiled. This was better; he had a clear line of sight straight to the target. He hit print, got up, slouched over to the printer and took the list that came out. He didn’t listen to whatever they were burbling about, that tight little group at the coffee machine, by Burl’s desk. He slid the paper into a folder, grabbed his jacket, and headed for the door.

Didn’t make it.

Burl’s voice, sotto voce, pitched low but sure over the plate.

“So what’s with Grim Tutterson over there?”

Tim stopped, even as he saw Rachel shake her head at him, felt nothing but the savage joy of combat as he slowly pivoted to face them all. He looked into their faces – Nelson and Davey, excited by the vicarious heroics, a little gratified, maybe, to see Tim ‘I don’t talk about the war’ Gutterson brought to heel; Melissa, unabashed approval of what she was hearing; Raylan – damn, some days he couldn’t read Raylan at all.

He gave a nod, and opened fire.

“Arghandab. ‘Bout a hundred twenty klicks outside of Kandahar? I know that place. Y’ever get into the US Special Forces building out that way? Just before the pass, used to be Mullah Omar’s place. Seven metres underground, guy just about caught a full on air raid and he walked out smiling at the end of it.”

Their faces were harder to parse, now, and that gave him a moment of satisfaction. He saw movement from the corner of his eye and Art appeared, Not Happy.

“I forget to tell you all this is a place of employment? If so, I do apologise for the lack of clarity when you signed up.”

Tim ignored him. He couldn’t help it; the wire was singing with tension, the bolt-cutter’s edge chill to his neck.

“Beautiful valley, all orchards and lines of trees, all kinds of fruit. There was a compound out there, to the west, and intel said some local Taliban shithead commander was holed up there, so me’n a couple of buddies, we settled in ‘bout 800 metres away, and waited, ‘cos it was comin’ up on Eid al-Fitr, and we knew he’d be coming out to pray in the open.”

Burl cleared his throat, as if to speak, but Tim wouldn’t let him.

“So we’re there, three days, just –“ he thought of Colton Rhodes, gave a disturbing smile, “just pissing and shitting in our helmets. And third day, sure enough, there’s people comin’ in from all over and we know our guy’s gonna come out, slaughter a goat, whatever the fuck, and we’re settin’ up, ready to go play. And just then – just like that, my buddy gets the most explosive case of the shits you ever saw in your life. I mean, he’d been cramping some, but that ain’t no rare thing, and then it just comes outta him like a burst balloon and we don’t know whether to laugh or cry, man, it’s everywhere.

“And then we hear this kid – we’d nicknamed him Mushtaq, seen him in the compound, he’s got one of them ‘peace and unity’ soccer balls got handed out to the kids –“

“Afghan flag on one side?” Burl nodded. Tim gave an encouraging grin.

“Right, yeah. One’s got handed out everywhere. So this kid is calling a name, over and over again, and we think, oh shit, it’s the dog, and sure enough, next thing we look up and there’s a goddamned dog hanging off the rock above us, barking like crazy, and my buddy’s got his hands just covered in shit, and my other buddy’s sayin’ we gotta stop that dog, and holy shit, here comes our target, right on cue, out to read in the field.”

He could see Art knew he should stop this, but Art was caught, like they all were, in the macabre rush of Tim’s story.

“ I got some beef jerky left in my pocket, so I leave my weapon – right there, on the rock, leave that and go call the dog down. I mean, I know its name, I’ve been listening to the kid call it for fifteen minutes now. I call it, real gentle, and offer the jerky and got it close enough so I could grab it.”

He stopped, waited; Nelson obliged.

“Then what happened? You made friends with it?”

Tim smiled.

“Hell no. I jammed my knife up under its throat, right through the top of its head. Then I crawled back, shot the guy, one shot, I didn’t miss, and we hightailed it outta there, all covered in shit and dog’s blood and carryin’ my buddy. Was a good thing we didn’t see the kid or I woulda shot him, too. And I hate wasting bullets. You know, you’re right, Nelson.” He slapped the folder against his palm, upbeat. “War stories are fun.”

Rachel’s arm was on his elbow, and that was good, that was great, because he’d fallen so far out of his skin he was hitting pavement.

“Let’s go,” she said, quiet and sure, so he turned with her, unwilling to name what he saw on the faces of everyone gathered there.

_______________________________________________________________________________

He was fizzing with the pleasure of it as he left the elevator with Rachel. That lasted all the way to the car. He only realised it had left when he went to release the lock and his hand was shaking too much to find the button.

“Why don’t I drive,” said Rachel, and it wasn’t a question. He handed her the keys and climbed into the passenger seat to twitch his leg, incessantly, against the car door. “Where am I going?” 

Tim consulted the folder, gave directions.

They drove in silence for ten minutes before Rachel started.

“You gonna tell me why you did that back there?”

Tim looked out the window. People were hurrying along the sidewalks, feeling the snow coming, reading the sky or, more likely, their weather alert app. Stocking up on salt, or batteries, or water. Scurrying under the looming sky as if they could outrun the cold, as if they could gather all they loved and cherished under one warm, happy roof and keep it inviolate against the deadly chill.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“No, you’re right. I never did do my basic asshole training.”

His knee banged harder against the door, and he dropped one hand down to still it before she said anything else. He almost regretted coming with her – or, more honestly, grabbing hold of her before he disappeared entirely under the concrete. But the truth was she was Rachel, and Tim was on her team, too.

“It’s just something you don’t do. Talk about it all.”

“Who says?” She wasn’t baiting him; she was genuinely asking.

Tim frowned. “No one says, you just know. It’s like a code of honor. You don’t go bragging about stuff, because...” Because too many good people weren’t here anymore to join in.

“Okay.” Rachel thought about that, and he loved that about her, the care she took with everything. “So why do you think Burl doesn’t understand that?”

“I dunno.” Tim shrugged it away, and knew as he did she wouldn’t let him escape that easily. He kept watching out the window, eyes gauging everyone they passed over, a hundred little stories born and gone as the car sped by.

“Maybe,” Rachel began, and she wasn’t preaching, he could tell that by her voice, but that didn’t mean he wanted to hear it anyway, “he’s looking to make a name for himself because he’s not feeling too certain about what he’s doing being a Marshal. Maybe he’s still coming to terms with it all and maybe that’s why he’s staying in the world he knows better.”

And that sounded true. Or at least, as if it held enough of the truth that Tim could believe it. Whether he wanted to or not was another question.

“Or maybe he’s a loudmouth blowhard who thinks that everything we did over there was glorious and heroic and full of God’s own virtue.”

“I’m not asking you to give him any special pass.”

“Well, thank you for that.”

“But I am asking you to give him the benefit of the doubt until you get to know him better.”

“I know him plenty.”

Rachel sighed, and he knew he’d managed to piss her off. It sent another of those little spikes into his gut. He shifted in the seat, suddenly so tired he could close his eyes and sink into the car, just drop everything and go.

“It’s just here.” He nodded to a modern office building, and Rachel pulled in, switched off the engine, sat in the sudden silence. He waited, weary beyond thought of action, for her to take the lead.

“What you did back there... it was ugly. I’ve never seen that in you before.”

Stupidly, he felt a sting in his eyes. He opened the door with abrupt force and stood to catch the wind in his face, letting it scour the sorrow and the shame out of him with the first bite of snowflakes in the air.


	6. Chapter 6

Dally Gutterson had four articles of faith that he passed on to his children.

It was a given fact that the moon landing was a hoax.

You never flushed pills down the sink or the toilet because they made the fish grow into mutants.

Scramble soda was the best soda in the Unites States, bar none.

And the more a man like Thurgood Galby said he’d done in the war, the less action you knew he’d actually seen.

Tim hadn’t said a word in the office about Afghanistan until today. He stood by the window and listened as Rachel extracted an address list for Daphne Overington’s warehouses full of confiscated goods, his eyes following the silent battery of snow as it hit the pavement and the people and the cars six storeys below, and wondered if his reticence came from a sense of honor or if he was simply holding onto the last of his old man’s dictates to be abandoned. The thought was a sour one.

Daphne Overington was apologetic, red-eyed with repressed tears, as the devastation wrought by her husband’s crooked business deals was visited upon her.

“We don’t need you to be present, ma’am,” Rachel said, only the barest trace of sympathy in her voice. But Tim knew her eyes would be kinder; just enough that the humiliation was still present but lessened, gentled by a touch of humanity. Too much kindness and they would be dealing with a breakdown; too little and they’d leave feeling like thugs. “If you give us the addresses, the Marshals will go to the warehouses and record and remove the contents.”

“Of course. Thank you.” Daphne stopped, gave an awful little laugh. “Should I be thanking you? You’re taking everything. How will you know what is – what is illegal, and what is legitimate?”

“Ma’am,” and Rachel gentled her voice further, “the court has decided that none of it is legitimate, since Jeffrey used laundered money to purchase and run the business in the first place.”

“Yes, of course, of course, I knew that. I... none of it?”

“Everything your husband did in his business was tainted by its provenance. I believe the house is in your name? We won’t be touching that.”

“It’s just – my children, I can’t bear the thought of them paying for Jeff’s sins, you know? They’re innocents in this.”

“Your husband ruined more than a few people along the way, Mrs. Overington. I’m sure many of them had children, too.”

“Deputy Gunnarson, was it?” She was trying another approach, looking for a crack in their collective wall. He stayed by the window, giving her a quick glance and nothing more, keeping his watch on the white world below, wrangling his headache. “Will you be going to the warehouses?”

He gave a slight shrug. “Probably.”

“Perhaps you could let me come with you? There might be personal items at the warehouses that I could make sure weren’t taken by those – by the Marshals.” He was sure she was going to say something uncomplimentary there and pulled back at the last second. It was a ploy to render her vulnerable in his eyes, so transparent it was almost cute.

“’Fraid not, ma’am,” he murmured to the window, watching the snow twist and fly back upon itself, full of play and spite. Papers rustled behind him, and he heard Rachel get to her feet.

“Thank you, ma’am. Deputy Gutterson?”

She was annoyed with him, thought he’d been unhelpful, unprofessional. Her voice cracked like a whip. 

“Deputy? Are you ready to go?”

“Ma’am,” and he turned to see Daphne Overington’s quick flush of relief that they were leaving, hastily hidden as she dropped her gaze to the blotter-pad on her desk. “You mind telling me what’s in those boxes being carried to the car out back?”

“Boxes?” She worked a wisp of hair behind her ear, unconsciously flirting as her mind raced. “I don’t know. Just trash, I expect.”

“You won’t mind if I check that trash, will you? Can you tell me the name of the employee loadin’ that car?”

With obvious reluctance, Daphne joined him at the window.

“Why, I can’t be sure. Probably some intern. We get so many...”

Tim nodded at Rachel.

“Whyn’t you stay here while I go have a word?” And Rachel gave him a wry little grin before resuming the mask, her acknowledgement that she’d misjudged him.

The employee was a man named Bernie Wagstaff, and he had worked for Overington Industries for 28 years. Tim resisted the urge to shuffle in the snow as Bernie waved his arms to make his point, the least intern-like man he’d ever seen.

“Twenty-eight goddamned years I work for that sonofabitch, then I get told all my super, all my retirement money, it’s gone ‘cos that dumbass SOB can’t do any kind of a decent job of coverin’ his tracks!”

Tim nodded. “Hard to know who to trust these days.”

“Got that right. Shee-it.” Bernie spat in the snow. Tim jerked a thumb towards the boxes crammed into Bernie’s wagon’s backseat.

“Mrs. Overington ask you to take those?”

Bernie blew out his breath, fuming. “Guess she did. Most of them. That one at the back? That’s my computer.”

“Well, Bernie, I gotta take all these.”

“Not my computer, man! Come on! I gotta wife, she don’t – she don’t need to see what I got on there.” He seemed genuinely upset by the thought.

Tim frowned.

“How would she see- ?”

“In court, man. They’ll go through it, they’ll enter it into evidence, and she’ll see it.”

“Uh-huh.” Tim’s feet were beginning to hurt with the coldness collecting around his ankles, matching the ache in his head. “So we’re talking - ?”

Bernie looked about him, checking for witnesses, then leaned in conspiratorially. “Porn, buddy. Some – some kinda porn sites.”

“Well, maybe your wife will understand. A man’s got urges.”

“But she might say,” and Bernie’s voice dropped even lower, “they were unnatural urges.”

The weak amusement Tim felt faded away for a coldness that had nothing to do with snow.

“Are we talking children, Bernie?”

“No! God, that’s sick, man. Not kiddie porn. Christ.” Bernie was clearly offended at the notion. “No, no, it’s more – it’s animals, you know? Dogs.”

“Dog porn?” Tim blinked. “You watched dog porn, Bernie?’

“Shhh. Don’t say it out loud. Christ!”

“Okay. Tell you what, Bernie. I gotta take all this stuff, but I promise I’ll go through on your computer and delete any dog porn I find, okay?”

“You’d do that?"

“With pleasure.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Bernie stamped his boots. “Fuck, it’s cold. Yeah, screw it. Take the lot. What do I care if he goes away for ten or twenty, huh? Not goin’ to bring me my money.”

The wagon belonged to the business, so Tim ended up taking the keys and driving it directly to the Marshal’s office, leaving Rachel to bring the other car. The snow asked for care as he drove, and it helped him bring his mind to bear upon the day. He wondered, vague with weariness, how badly Art would carpet him for the morning’s display. Plucking a car full of incriminating documents from a routine visit would offer some appeasement. 

He leaned against the wall in the elevator, and regretted it almost at once; the urge to slide down and just sleep on the floor was almost overwhelming. But crossing his arms and leaning back told the world that all was cool with Deputy Marshal Gutterson, and that’s what he wanted to be when he opened the office doors. He drew in a breath, then another, and pushed off with an assumed air of couldn’t-care-less as the elevator doors slid back and he strolled into the office.

Only to find it almost entirely empty.

“Well, hello there, Joan Crawford.” Art gave one of his not-grins and tilted his head. “We done with the grandstanding for today?”

“Where is everybody?”

“Why? Missing your audience?”

“Chief.”

“Okay, okay.” Art’s eyes glittered with something sardonic, clearly unimpressed, but he let it go. “Well, turns out your new BFF Burl had some intel on that fella Raylan’s been chasing down Danville way, name of Cassius Chilver.”

“Chilver?” Tim didn’t squeak the name, but it was a damn close thing. “They’re goin’ after Chilver?”

Art feigned concern. “And that causes you some agitation because..?”

“Chilver.” Tim threw his arm out expressively. “He’s got ties to Miami, and Del Rey, shit, Raylan’s been chasin’ him for months. Chilver, really?”

“Now you mention it, I do recall hearing some vague notion about this guy and Raylan and all that Miami mess.”

Of course he did; when it came to the Lexington Marshal’s office, Art knew if two flies fucked in the fruit-bowl.

“And Torvey knew something..?”

“Apparently,” said Art, in that faux-gossipy way he employed when he wanted to demonstrate his superiority all over again, “he heard whispers about Chilver through an old Army pal who runs a bounty hunting service in Mobile. Got an address from an ex who’s pinin’ after some daddy child-support.”

Cassius Chilver was a violent, evil man rumoured to have stingers in his artillery. The thought of the Marshal’s office going after him without Tim in support made his guts churn, in the way they always did when other units were sent to a fire-fight and he was ordered to stand down.

“Should I suit up?”

“I believe they’re managing just fine without you.”

“So everyone’s okay? Did they get him?”

Art waggled his head. “Bringing him up as we speak. One casualty – seems your BFF Burl gave Cassius a black-eye after a misunderstanding upon meeting.”

A carload of documents and doggy porn was yesterday’s news. Cassius Chilver was a genuine catch, the kind of takedown that got written up in gold ink and forwarded to the powers that be.

He hadn’t begun to process it when the office doors burst open behind him and he whirled to see half a dozen marshals escorting the glowering figure of Chilver into the bullpen. Dragging him along, with one hand on his elbow, was Burl Torvey, grinning like a kid. Raylan prowled behind, his satisfaction level evidently at some point beyond happy and moving into officially dazzled. He gave Tim a beaming nod before helping to steer Chilver into the holding cell, while Art crowed.

“Aw, now, look at that. Burl, you brought me a present, in my size and all. ‘Afternoon, Mr. Chilver, I hope my deputies have been showing you the due and proper care and courtesy?”

“Fuck you all to hell,” Chilver spat. Burl cuffed him behind the ears as he closed the door.

Then the buzzing afterburn of a successful mission took over. Nelson and Melissa gave an impromptu re-enactment, complete with sound effects, while Burl and Raylan sat cross-ways on their desks, both magnanimous in their mutual praise, and Art leant against the conference room wall and lapped up the story, each detail more heroic and outlandish than the last.

And Tim felt the dislocation, a snapping back, breaking off, leaving him alone on some distant, flashlit edge.

Tim Gutterson had talked about the war, had opened one vein, one rivulet, popped the top off one encrusted scab – and the world kept turning. Nobody was upset. It wasn’t that no-one cared; no one had even noticed.

He sat down heavily at his desk, feeling old. Old as the hills, but not so wise. Useless old, like dust, or hate, or broken down factories no one used any more, all rotten parts and gaping windows, a target for children and strays.

He heard and saw the congratulations erupting all around him, a dozen little geysers of backslaps and high fives. Cassius Chilver was brought to heel, and the useless, pitiful, stupid, stupid, stupid tantrum of one junior marshal counted for absolutely naught in the ongoing rush of marshal business.

Well, good. Great. As it should be. 

Tim cleared his throat, booted up his computer, and sat blinking at it as he wondered when the hell he’d gotten so self-absorbed and emotionally febrile that his problems mattered enough to be spread all over the bullpen. It was sitting next to Raylan that did it. The man was a human headline. Somehow the lessons of his childhood of keeping his head down, mouth shut had been abandoned in favour of Raylan’s grand guignol, delivered cowboy style. Tim shook his head – carefully, the headache still boomed behind his eyes – and set about typing up the underwhelming Overington case, with a silent promise that he would not open his mouth for a solid six hours while his spirit level dipped back to even again.

He tapped diligently, checking his notes when his fuzzy mind failed to provide exact details. One page. Two. What was the registration on that wagon? Right, there it was. Three pages. Keeping his eyes down as Nelson said, “Man, shoulda seen Burl, Rachel, guy’s a genius with a rifle,” and Raylan said, “How did you know that guy was spotting us from the outhouse?” and Art said, “Burl, you keep this up, I’m gonna have to get some more bourbon,” and Burl said, “Got taught to look six ways to Sunday when I was out at Now Zad, ‘bout 100 klicks from Kandahar, and this Taliban ambush almost caught us with our pants down but luckily I saw the fella’s rifle gleaming, like today,” and Tim said, “Why don’t you keep your goddam fucking war porn to your goddam fucking self?”

He felt the silence as much as he heard it, and looked up to see why all the mutual masturbation had stopped, and what it was that was suddenly pressing down on his shoulders. It was suddenly like being on the inside of a kaleidoscope, all the angles and colours converging on a centre that was his desk, all the sharp points facing towards him.

“Tim. My office.”

That was a sergeant’s snap, and Tim obeyed.

He expected some kind of well-remembered mocking chatter to drive him in to the roasting no doubt due, but it was quiet behind and before him. Art motioned to the couch, and Tim sat down. Everything was just a little far away from him. Focus was hard. He waited for Art to throw him another rope.

“You mind tellin’ me what’s going on with you?”

A gentler tone than he expected or deserved, and it made him sway a little. Hard to stay buttressed against a push that doesn’t come.

“Tim, a blind man can see you’re drowning where you sit. Now, I didn’t make it to chief on my good looks, distracting though they must be. I can trace your weird, non-Tim behaviour to the Mertens incident, and I gotta say again – it was a good shooting.”

“That it was.” Tim frowned a little, a default setting. “Real good. Just above the eyebrow, centre of the forehead.” He placed a finger precisely where the bullet had struck. “A Hall of Famer.”

“Tim.” Art’s voice was different, it was sad, and Tim couldn’t have that. He offered the only bone he had.

“I stole a dog.”

Art’s hands had found their usual occupation when perturbation troubled his soul; they were working across and behind his head as if soothing ruffled fur. At Tim’s words they stopped, comically frozen.

“You. You. Stole a dog.”

“Yeah.”

Art leaned back, his hands still trapped against his head as if glued there.

“You see that printer/photocopier out there? See the book on the string attached to it, just above it? That’s for people in this office to list their private printing. See that tin beside it? That’s for people in this office to put ten cents a copy for every print that’s not for marshal’s business. You know the only name in there? Yours. And the money matches every single copy you list. Tim, you don’t steal.”

“I know.” Tim nodded in absolute agreement. “Stole a dog.”

“May I ask why? Or am I being too pedestrian in my thinking? Too bourgeois?”

“She was – Chief, she was in a real horrible way. It was a rescue. I had to rescue her. Couldn’t leave her.”

“Uh huh. So you stole her.” Art’s hands finally found movement again. “So the owner wasn’t willing to sell?”

The question brought Tim a moment of incomprehension brilliant in its thoroughness.

“I – I guess I didn’t ask.”

Art frowned.

“You know who owns it? You didn’t think to offer twenty bucks to take it off his or her hands?”

“No, I –“ and Tim floundered, suddenly sick of himself and everything to do with him. What the hell was wrong with him that he didn’t offer Bart a twenty? Why did he still feel that doing so would have robbed himself of something else?

He felt a buzzing in his pants pocket, and after a glance for permission, drew out his phone. He knew before checking it exactly who it would be.

“Art, I gotta go. That’s my neighbour. I got an issue at home.”

“Alright. Let’s draw a big, black crayon line through today and start fresh tomorrow. When you’ll be partnering Burl Torvey as you go and sort out those Overington warehouses.”

“Yessir.”

“And you will both come back all bonded and shit over your Band of Brothers fandom websites, right?”

Tim opened his mouth to deny any such thing, and closed it at the look in Art’s eye.

“One more thing before you go. What’s her name?”

“Who?”

“The dog. What have you called her?"

It threw him again, another loss of balance as he reached for a surety that simply wasn’t there.

“Well, she’s already got a name, Art. Can’t call her something when she’s already got a name.”

“Sure. That makes sense.” Art swung forward, interest by way of concern narrowing his eyes. “But I’m gonna bet a five dollar shot that you don’t know it.”

Jazz, Tim thought. She should be Jazz.

“Tim, take the dog back. Or take the owner money. It throws the universe out of whack when you’re on the dark side of the Force. And get some sleep. I was only kidding about the zombie apocalypse, but you look like the lead role.”

Tim nodded, and turned to face the bullpen. Everyone kept their eyes studiously at their computer or the coffee machine or their phone as he passed. He didn’t know if it was pity or disgust. He didn’t know what to do with either.

Outside the snow had eased a little. The neighbour’s text in its capslocked fury told of the dog outside in the back yard, barking and jumping at the tree. It told of sworn revenge, and ready shotguns, and a willingness to gun down an old dog from behind a six foot fence if that was what was needed, by god and damn it all to hell. And he was all too tired for it, the pettiness, the aggravation, the disconnect from the office, so as he drove home he found he didn’t have the energy to stop thinking of that time so long ago, when he had to rescue another lady lost in the snow.


	7. Chapter 7

Wind pummelled the windows like a tormented child, and Tim’s mama held her hands up to her ears, moaning, “Not today, not today.” Everything about her- her hair, her clothes, the way her face twisted away at the corners – everything suggested something at the mercy of the gale. Even Dally saw it, and tried to gently take her hands down.

“Hush now, hush now, darlin’. Ain’t nothin’ but a rain storm, comin’ in hard.”

Tim gave a light shiver. There was sorrow in this wind, a threnody of nothing but ghostly wails that pulled at his joints, knocked on his bones, searching for the rhythm of the living. It held all the bitterness of snow in its torment, and he scowled at the clouds scudding in east, at his mother’s helplessness, his father’s calm. He was unhappy, and impatient, and he wasn’t watching.

Because Dally had come home to stay, and somehow, that wasn’t what Tim wanted after all.

Dally drove the wagon into an old wrecked Buick abandoned on the side of the road near Jonesboro. He ploughed into it, a grotesque fornication of steel, drunk and lost and ninety dollars down after three weeks’ of looking for work. The wagon was a write off, and his shoulder was broken in three places. That accorded him some kind of status amongst the ladies of Clay County; once was a commonplace, twice was remarked upon, but three times was an event worthy of gossip. The story spread in the vacuum of their lives, and Dally Gutterson came home to as many baked dishes as he could eat in a month, along with an unhealthy interest in his newly acquired deformity.

It may not have been as picturesque as they hoped, but it was crippling. Dally was now confined to the house, his income limited to a disability cheque and whatever he earned beneath the counter as a handy man about town.

And so, like a monarch returned bearing battle scars from foreign wars, Dally set about to reclaim the rule of his kingdom.

And Tim, once regent in absentia, burned.

The language and reasoning to parse it all was beyond his fifteen year old self. A younger child would have handed back the crown and the burden with relief: an older man would have recognised the rightness, the necessity. But Tim felt only usurpation; what was once his place and purpose was gone, and now he stood by as his father doled out medication, and fixed leaking roofs, and adjudicated quarrels.

The king was redundant. Long live the king.

Now, as he stared out at the roiling clouds, he projected deliberate malice onto their relentlessness. He needed to get to school, away from his father’s ill-conceived and unwanted parenting and towards the one thing that consumed him these past three weeks; and the weather looked to be doing everything in its power to consciously thwart him.

“Come on, Shell, quit stallin’. It’s just a storm.”

“I don’t want to go. I think it’s going to snow.” Shelley was as morose as Tim, but for different reasons. She had nothing but a pair of old trainers on her feet, useless against any kind of rain, and never liked physical discomfort.

“Well, I’m going. I got science today, workshop, don’t wanna miss it.”

“Ohhhh.” Shelley smirked. “Now I know why you’re in such a hellfire hurry to go get wet. Laura Patterson, huh?”

It was horribly, awfully, gloriously true. Tim Gutterson had been walking along by his locker, inconspicuous and unsuspecting, when a bottomless chasm opened beneath his feet, right there in the junior high hallway. The ground gave way as Ellie Hoffman raised her shirt to show the bruise she’d gained in dance class to two girlfriends, and for three sacred seconds Tim caught a glimpse of the swell of her breast and the shine of a satin-red bra.

He’d been in freefall ever since.

It was as though the world was falling away with him. Before that moment, girls held no great mystery or allure; he had two sisters, so girls were alternately aggravating, charming, annoying, fragile, overwhelming with their chatter and busyness and generally kind of fun. He spoke without hesitation or doubt with girls. He appreciated their talents, their perspectives. He was a reasonably fair-minded, well-adjusted teenager who thought the leering of some of his classmates was pathetic.

Then he discovered Sex, and everything he once held true about himself was lost as his body decided to make up for its regrettable stability over the last fifteen years and drop him into the spiralling chaos of blood rush and boners that was puberty. Suddenly, girls were everywhere he looked, a torment on two legs, defining his nights and shower sessions by their scent and sway and leaving his right hand and another part of him sore with over-use. He didn’t understand how anybody ever did anything; why weren’t adults having sex all day long, once they were old enough to do it? How could they not? He took to wearing his bag slung over his front to hide the fact that he was almost constantly aroused. He wondered if he was some kind of sex fiend – nobody else seemed consumed as he was, nobody else was pin wheeling down a mine shaft of constant, aching lust.

The vigilance that had been his constant duty since he was seven years old was lost. Thinking about anything but sex seemed a waste of time to him now. He left his mother to his father’s care, and thought of Laura, and Amber, and Ellie, and how impossible their existence on the same earthly plane as his was.

And he was not missing out on sharing a lab-bench with Laura Patterson for the sake of a little weather.

“I’m going.” He grabbed his bag, slung it over his chest, and paused to give Jazz a rough pat. “You want me to walk you, you better get off your ass right now.”

Grumbling, Shelley gathered her own things. Pixie was away at a camp for advanced students in Little Rock, so as their mama wavered in her presence, and their father reasserted his with unconscious heaviness, the two of them set out on the three mile walk, coats whipping around their bodies as they walked with the wind at their backs.

Science came after the first break, and Tim found himself suspended in an agony of anticipation as the first period ground on. He always sat well up the back in advanced math class; he could do this stuff, easy, so AP math was a chance to stretch his legs out and daydream, but all his daydreams these days took him into a place that was acutely uncomfortable. Laura took general math, and that seemed to him to be an injustice in the system. Then again, the chance of him ever listening to anything in AP math ever again if she were here was slim. So he stuck a pen in his mouth (even the thought of that turned him on) and listened as the windows shook to the tune of the storm, and classmates muttered about going home.

“They should let us out,” Kennedy said. He lived close enough that the fact was a torment of possibility to him each day; he could see his front porch, beckoning, from the science wing. “My brother said it just about tore into Mississippi this mornin’.”

“If they were going to do that, we’da heard from Old Creaky.” Tim spoke in hope. Old Creaky was the obvious nickname for Cready, the principal.

Kennedy shook his head. “Reckon we’re gonna get snowed in.”

As if in response to his words, the first wet flakes slapped up, silently, against the window pane. The bell to end the first period sounded and the students gravitated, as if by agreement, to the window.

“Go on! You’ve got science, I believe,” Mrs. Tanner said. “No point gawking. Won’t change a thing.”

Reluctantly, as if they’d never seen snow before, the students filed away from the classroom towards the science wing. They bottlenecked together at the doorway before putting their heads down and plunging into the storm to cross the quad and reach it. Tim looked up, eyes squinting in the sting of the wind and snow to see Laura running to the science building from the other classroom block, and the weather’s cold bite disappeared in the flood of tingling warmth all over his body. She wore red leggings and bright yellow socks, and he’d never seen anything more beautiful.

“Hey,” he called as he drew close. She glanced back but quickly hid her face from the blast.

“Oh, hi. You got those notes from last week?”

“Oh, sure. I made you a copy.” That wasn’t trying too hard. Was it? She wasn’t to know how slowly the task went, hours of it, as he curbed his usual hieroglyphics into something at least mostly readable. He found himself pulled towards her, happily helpless in the press of bodies escaping the cold. “Should be good today, huh? Newton’s Laws.”

“Newton’s Laws?” She gave him a vaguely incredulous look, quickly lost as she continued to scan the sky outside the corridor windows. “Who could be interested in that?”

“Yeah. No. I guess.”

She looked at him properly, ignoring whatever he was mumbling about. “Do you think we’ll get sent home?”

“Maybe.” She looked worried, so he added, “I could walk you. Make sure you got there okay.”

She blinked at him. He stood at least three inches shorter than her.

“I want my mom to come pick me up.”

“Yeah, of course, that would be – um...” he flailed briefly, wondering how it was that a girl he’d chatted to for the last ten years without the slightest hesitation had become an impassable block in his mind.

The students filed into the science lab, tendrils of nervous tension wrapping around each one as the poorly maintained windows rattled violently in their frames and the snow swept past their vision. A good storm like this one brought drama to an otherwise mundane day, and most of them were very willing to wallow in projections of disaster, despite the best efforts of Mrs. Minchin, the science teacher, to drag them clear of it.

Tim took his place at their usual work station, determinedly keeping his eyes above where the short woollen skirt Laura wore rode up on her thighs as she straddled the work-stool. It didn’t help. Just the fact of her, the thought of that skirt hem, those red leggings tight against it and the way they parted into darkness in order to balance on the stool – each or any one of them meant he had to pull his stool up hard against the bench in order to hide what was happening below.

“Alright, settle down. Newton’s second law of motion; acceleration – force – mass. How can we link these three together in a way that represents Newton’s second law?”

Twenty three pairs of eyes immediately dropped to papers, benches, shoes. Four earnest students in the front benches raised their hands, begging to be asked.

“Yeah. Okay. Anyone not from Try Hard Alley?”

Tim watched Laura’s hands as they squeezed each other in their gloves, imagined them squeezing something else and slapped a hand against his mouth to cover a groan.

“Oh, Mister Gutterson. You’ve got something to offer? Amaze me. Blow my tiny mind. Acceleration – force – mass..?”

“Hey.” Kennedy spoke up from the back. “There’s some naked chick outside.”

An immediate flurry of students crammed against the window, ignoring the weary “Kennedy, really, what garbage is this now?” from Mrs. Minchin.

“He’s right, look!” Michael Ferguson pointed. Some of the girls gave nervous little laughs. Amber Mosley squealed.

“Ew, gross. You can see everything!”

“Is she someone’s mom?”

“Alright, that’s enough.” Mrs. Minchin inserted herself forcefully between the students and the window. “Come away now.” She looked over her shoulder at the woman outside and shook her head. “Diana, can I trust you to get to Creaky’s office and let him know?”

Tim hadn’t moved. Something told him. Some sense of disaster held him as if pinned to a specimen tray, ready for incision.

“Hey, Gutterball. Isn’t that your mom?”

Mrs. Minchin frowned at the speaker, then gave Tim a worried look. “Tim, is that - ?”

He stood, slowly, feeling all eyes on him. Watching, as he’d failed to watch. From his spot against the door he looked through and beyond all his classmates, each of them more or less avid at the spectacle of another student being sliced open, past their greed for scandal and out to the rapidly whitening yard. There, huddled against the wind, buffeted and staggering, was his mother.

She wasn’t really naked. But she was only wearing a thin cotton housecoat, with nothing underneath. The material was soaked to transparency. Tim saw her flat breasts, the darkness between her legs, her arms raw with a cold that had to be painful. And most shocking of all, somehow, the bareness of her feet. It was the sight of those thin ankles disappearing into the snow, unprotected, utterly vulnerable, that hurt him the most.

“Wow.” Corey Hansen was smirking. “Your mom bringin’ your lunch, Gutterball?”

“What the fuck are you looking at?” Tim burst across the room, grabbing Corey’s shirt and slamming him back against the wall. He was so fast, and so violent, that Corey gasped and cried out, shocked into genuine fear.

“Tim! Enough. Put him down. No, Mister Hansen, you don’t get to complain since you lacked the decency to shut up.” Mrs. Minchin kept her voice as even as she could, and Tim spared a second to bless her for it. He knew that pity at this point would rob him of the power to do anything. “Tim, you’d better go and help your mother. Everyone else can sit down and get on with your work.”

And that was what he needed. Laura, Corey, Kennedy, even Mrs. Minchin - everyone in the room faded into irrelevance. 

Tim left at a run, hearing his boots echoing in the empty corridor, nothing in his mind but his sweet and funny mama, lost in the ice storm. He barrelled into the teeth of it and almost lost his footing – the wind had picked up even in the few minutes since he’d crossed the quad. It was useless to call. He put his head down and fought his way towards her, willing her to stay where she was.

Closer, and he could hear what she was saying.

“They have to come home. They have to come home. They have to come home.”

“Mama? Mom?” He reached for her, but she hunched in on herself, unknowing of anything but her own eternal landscape, seen from high above. Hurriedly he pulled off his jacket and wrapped it around her, partly covering her. She resisted clutching it as she needed to, and Tim held it tight against her, his head close to hers as he yelled. “We have to go home.”

“Yes!” She grabbed him, her hands blue with cold. “They have to come home.”

“They’re coming home, Mama. We’re coming home. We have to go now.”

With despair, he thought of Shelley. But he couldn’t let her know. The rumour mill would take care of that, he supposed, and he had a quick moment of sadness at her suffering to come. She’d hear a hundred different versions, all of them awful, and he wouldn’t be there for her. He couldn’t wait for her, either. Their mama was exposed here, to more than the weather, and he had to get her home, to where they could protect her and keep her safe from the judgment already being brought to bear.

“Come on, Mama, walk with me,” he said, holding onto her, urging her steps. 

“I have to find them. They have to come home.”

“I’m here, Mama, I’m coming home with you.”

She looked past him, distraught. “They have to come home. It’s getting so dark.”

“Please, Mom.” He dared to tug at her, and she pulled back, outraged, lost.

“Don’t you! Fucker! I’m here for my children.”

“Shit.” He looked about him, desperate, then made a decision and swung his shoulder down and into her. Before she could protest he lifted her onto his shoulder and turned into the wind.

She screamed. It hurt him as if her screams were part of the ice now burning his face.

He didn’t say anything to her. There was nothing he could say. She didn’t fight him, physically, lying limp and exhausted across his back. But she screamed, a mad, horrible sound, and the screaming was relentless.

Head down, he trudged through the rapidly gathering snow. His boots were soaked in seconds, along with his shirt. He forgot them both when he saw her feet, blue-white and cut, too cold to bleed, bumping against his chest. 

It usually took twenty five minutes to walk from school to home. In the storm, accompanied by his mother’s shrieks and staggering under her weight, it took an hour. Even though her voice was almost gone by the time his front door came into view, he heard her keep straining to scream her anguish for her lost little ones, somewhere in the wildness. His ragbag heart was bleeding as he pushed open the unlocked front door and stumbled on down the corridor to his parents’ room. 

And over and over, the question that thrummed with each pulse, remained: where the fuck was his father?

He lowered her to the bed and took off the jacket then groped for the blankets, wrapping her, still wet and shivering, under their warmth. She seemed to stop then. Exhaustion, or acceptance, or perhaps her mind had gone far beyond the travails of weather and family. Whatever the cause, Tim was grateful, because he had more to do now and didn’t know what strength he had left for the task.

Everything in him ached, but the thought of hot showers had to be put ruthlessly aside. He couldn’t take off his boots, because he had no others, and he couldn’t get his wet jeans off over his boots, but he could change his shirt and reclaim his soaked jacket. His hands were claws, unable to be straightened.

“Dad?” His voice was a croak, and he tried again, louder. But he knew the house was empty, except for Jazz, pushing his nose against Tim’s thigh, reading his distress.

“Hey, Jazz. Hey, buddy.” For one quick, awful second he wanted to bury his face in his dog’s fur and howl; but he fought the urge, biting his lip instead and turning back for the door.

“Gotta go get Shell, Jazz. You stay with Mama, okay?”

No, that was not okay; Jazz whined and stayed close as Tim stepped past the rain and snow that had been blown inside the house through the open door. His dog was not abandoning him, and that was a comfort he could cling to.

A moment’s hesitation, right at the top of the porch steps – and then he committed himself, letting the wind blow him along, with Jazz tucked in close to his legs, his blackness muted to gray in seconds.

It was another half hour of struggle in the cold. The lights of the school were bright against the darkness of the mid-morning storm when he finally rounded the bottom of the hill, so chilled now he could barely breathe. He stumbled forwards, peering past the cars collecting out the front, the anxious parents and excited students, who were all variously delighted with the disruption of their day. In the snow and dim light individual faces were blurred to sameness. Jazz pushed on, assured, and Tim followed.

They found Shelley waiting by the front office. She was talking with Laura Patterson, both girls flushed with the general excitement. His sister glanced at him as he came near.

“Oh my god. Don’t you got any sense? What’ve you been doing – playin’ in the snow?”

Laura looked uncomfortable, and Tim realised, with a new tightness in his belly, that Shelley didn’t know. He was amazed that no-one had taken the opportunity to relish her dismay as they piled up the salacious details.

“Come on, Shell. We gotta get home.”

She tossed her head. “Laura’s mom’s giving me a ride.”

Tim looked past her to see Mrs. Patterson gathered with several of the other mothers, all heads together, talking urgently. Maybe it was the storm that was exercising their minds. Maybe it was the state of the roads, and the damage to their gardens. But he’d bet everything he owned that it was the scandalous doings of Clara Gutterson, and the good mothers of Greentop High were feasting on that like carrion on a particularly noisome carcase.

He gritted his teeth. 

“Sure.”

“You can come with us, you like.” Laura made the offer with studied casualness, and he saw how she widened her eyes slightly in the direction of her friends, standing several feet away, watching but not watching in the way girls did the world over. Laura, Tim understood with sickening clarity, was looking for Details. Extra tidbits to bring to the talk table after the Guttersons were dropped at home.

“Yeah. Okay.” And the thought that would have had him almost catatonic with excitement less than two hours ago was simply painful to him now. Mrs. Patterson left her group of friends and came to join them, conspicuously smiling, jaws tight with intrigue.

“Well, there you are.” Somehow , the statement of fact was rendered an accusation in her mouth, as if they’d been deliberately hiding from her. “You ready to go, Laura, honey?”

“Can Tim come too, Mom?”

“Why, of course, dear.” The picture of maternal solicitude, Mrs. Patterson nodded and smiled before saying, “How’s your poor mother, Tim? She get home okay?”

“She’s fine.”

“What do you mean?” Shelley frowned, suddenly aware of the claws beneath the care. “What’s with Mama?”

Laura opened her mouth to answer, but Tim said, “I’ll tell you at home, Shell.”

And Shelley didn’t pursue it; the Gutterson children knew the boundaries of discussion about their mother, and they did not incorporate the corridors of Greentop High.

Tim could tell that Mrs. Patterson was disappointed. She gave a slight sniff, and they left the warmth of the office area for the bleakness outside. It was only then that she noticed Jazz.

“That’s not your dog, Tim.”

“Yeah, he is.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t have a dog in my car.”

Tim stared at her.

“Well, I just can’t.” Mrs. Patterson bristled, as if he’d challenged with her. She opened the doors to her gleaming station wagon, her smile bright and hard, daring him to argue. “You’ll have to leave him here. He’ll be fine.”

Until that moment, Tim would have sworn that formidable women like Mrs. Patterson would always have his measure. But with his dog tight against his legs, wet, weary, but not dreaming of abandoning him, he found a different truth.

“He’s comin’ with us.” Quickly, he slid into the car, then patted his lap for Jazz to jump up on him. Laura gasped.

“Tim!”

He glared at her. “You gettin’ in? It’s cold to be standin’ around.”

Shelley promptly joined him in the backseat, while Laura and Mrs. Patterson stood open-mouthed, until Mrs. Patterson found her voice.

“Tim Gutterson! You will get that wet beast out of my car this instant!”

“Nope.” Tim gave her one of her own smiles back. “You can try shiftin’ him, but I don’t reckon you’d get more than a handful of wet fur. Now, you can stand there arguin’, or you can get in. Reckon I know which I’d rather, ‘f I were you.”

Mother and daughter hovered there, for a second, in immaculate outrage. Then, with an acquiescence born of the weather, they both dropped into their front seats. Mrs. Patterson’s fury resonated through the car, but Tim ignored it. He held tight to Jazz as the station wagon started up and eased away, through the slow traffic, the snow-flurries and indistinct pedestrians. And he learned something else about himself; that all the hormones in the world were not proof, for him, against a dislike of character. Laura Patterson was just another girl, now, and never would hold any kind of power over him, ever again.

The drive was silent; the Guttersons got out with muted thank yous, unacknowledged, before the car disappeared almost at once in the storm. Jazz bounded up the steps ahead of him to the door, as Tim told Shelley what had happened. How their world had crumbled once more, and how it was time for the blue and red lights to wash over them again, taking their mother away to somewhere safe and healing and utterly dreadful.

Shelley didn’t cry as Tim rang for the ambulance, but when she came out of her mother’s bedroom, her eyes were red. Tim knew it would be several hours before the ambulance arrived, so he left her and went to the bathroom, claiming some hot water and some space before he suddenly sat in the bathtub with the shower head dribbling onto him and began shaking as if it was the cold in his bones, as if it had anything to do with the storm.

Two hours later, Dally appeared. Tim heard his voice, heard Shelley explaining, heard bedroom doors opening and closing and the rattle of Jazz’s paws on the floor as he ran sentry detail up and down the house. He had a lot to say to his father – a lot of questions, a lot of accusations. But all the words lay about his feet, limp, useless, and he lacked the energy to bend down to lift them up and fling them in his father’s face. He stayed in the backroom instead, and his father didn’t come near him.

Only one more thing stirred him that day, after he came out to watch them load his mother on a gurney and take her away. It was his last lesson.

Dally stood silently in the kitchen, working his jaw, unable, it seemed, to take any kind of action that would claim his authority. Shelley sat slumped at the table, head down on her bent arms. And Rhonda Galby bustled about the room, pretty and practical and glowing with helpfulness.

“Oh, there you are, sweetheart. Come on in and set a spell. I’ve got your supper on the stove, one of your favourites, Dally tells me.” She stepped to him and patted his cheek before giving him a quick hug. “Now, you don’t worry none. I’m going to look after y’all now.”

And Tim learned that even when every part of him wanted to do it, he could not punch a woman.


End file.
